PREFACE: I heard a song that made me think last night, and this memory, which remains at the forefront of my mind anytime I start to do something stupid, came to me and I thought I would tell it to you.
I spent my last few years of high school at a boarding school outside of Philadelphia. And as you know I am planning a trip up there for my new position. As I was doing my work, I heard a few songs that made me think about those days at school, and you know I honestly miss being 16, 17, & 18 in high school. I had a great time in high school. But as much fun as I had, there were a couple of dark days.
Now I am not talking about problems with girls, or anything like that. I was a pretty stupid kid. I was also pretty smart, regardless of what my grades said about me. And my problem was not so much being bored, but the fact, I was always looking to make a buck, and I wanted adventure. So although I could come up with some enterprising ideas they required me doing stupid things which I did, cause I was simply a bad ass and nothing could touch me.
So there are a lot of details in the back story of this tale, but I am not going to go into it all. I ask that you take what you read at face value. You can read whatever you want into it, and you can fill the back story with your imagination, but for purposes of brevity, I am going to tell you about this microcosm of my life.
“Under The Milky Way” is one of my favorite tunes, and I can listen to the song over and over again. It is my hymn of angst as a teenager. I was looking for something but could never find it. Today I hear the song and think about how I do not feel like an adult but how I have all these adult responsibilities.
I was listening to it that night James took us into Downingtown. I had never been to this place before, and my buddy Alex decided to come with me this particular night. Before we met up with James, or rather while we waited for James, I found out why Alex was so excited about coming this evening. So we are sitting on the curb, and Alex opens his coat up and pulls out a nice nickel plated .45 semi-auto. I looked at Alex and asked him what the fuck he was doing with that thing cause there was no need for this shit. He told me it was because we were going to a new place, and he wanted to back me up. I told Alex that he shouldn’t have that shit in the first place, but he better keep the gun under wraps the entire time. I couldn’t send him back because he might have gotten busted which would have put the whole operation in jeopardy, and I didn’t have enough time to have him go back and get Mark because I did need a backup or wingman as we called it.
In the car, I sat up front, Alex in back and James was driving. The other aspect of this trip was the time, so all told, the drive was forty five minutes there and forty five minutes back. That gave me 30 minutes to get what I wanted, which should be more than enough time to get what was needed. We all chatted, but even James was a jittery. He was normally all laid back and chilled out. But he told me the day before if I wanted to go to one place to get the stuff, he knew these guys would square him away, but he never used them before.
We pulled off the turnpike and into the small dirty little town (hey if you are from D-town reading this story, it took place back in 1985 so hopefully things have gotten better since then) wove through some streets and ended up in front of this little house. I recall it had that sort of gingerbread trim running the length of the roof and there was a walk right up to the door, with a little step. James stopped the car and told me to be cool, he would signal me in when they were ready. I said, “cool,” and Alex did the same. We sat in the car waiting. After a few minutes I saw the door open and James motioned his hands for us to come to him. Both Alex and I got out of the car and strode up to the door. I came in first, and then Alex behind me. I was introduced to the two guys. I don’t remember their names, but I sort of recall what they looked like. The one behind the scale had a doo-rag on head and had some surgical gloves. The other one, well I really do not recall what he looked like for obvious reasons you will soon understand. I do know he was bald and had a gold tooth.
As I envision this scene (I have looked back upon this many times through out my life and I seem to play the whole thing from a third person perspective) I walked up to the guy with the scale and was basically by myself. It is sort of like the scene where Oliver approaches the headmaster, “Please Sir, may I have some more…” But instead of a bowl, in my hands, I had a wad of cash in my pockets. So being properly introduced, Alex and James hung back at the door while I conducted some hasty business.
The guy at the scale asks me how much I want, I tell him two ounces of weed, and three grams of blow. The guy looks at me and says, “boy, you know that is $100 a gram right?” I tell him yeah, no problem, and he says, “whatever you want man,” and on the table his partner drops a couple of nice hefty bags of weed and the doo-rag guy pulls out three vials from his pocket and puts it on the table. OK, so my new buddy is measuring shit on his scale and he expects me to take some vials of who knows what and pay him $300 bucks for it? I think not, so I say to the guy something like, “hey man… not trying to be an ass, but could I have some of that fresh and I will wait while you measure it out?”
Well that was the wrong thing to say, I think. I mean I could trust James to fetch me a gram when I wanted it and I had no problems with that. But this guy, wanted $300 for three vials that could have been fucking detergent. But that didn’t matter, the next thing I know this guy is standing up calling me a punk motherfucker and asking me who I fucking thought I was. Prancing in wanting three grams… he told me he shit three grams for breakfast. And so the next thing I know his buddy, the bald guy, is asking me where my money was, and I told him in my pocket. So he tells me to take it out. I tell them, that we should call the whole fucking thing off. They tell me they will call it off after they have my fucking money for wasting their time. I tell them that I am just going to leave and now everyone is yelling. James is telling these guys that we are just kids and chill out. Alex is telling the guy with the bald head to back off, and that is when things went to shit.
Next thing I know I have this bald guy with a gold tooth in my face and have a 9mm or some such gun at the side of my head. This guy is telling me if I want to live, I better let him see some cash. Ok, so there are no fucking heroics here, I am 17 years old and this fucker has a gun to my head. I am stuttering at this time, telling him sure. But no sooner had I started defusing the situation Alex pulls his gun, and tells the bald guy to put his fucking gun down. Ok, so I am now half turned around, with a gun pointed at my head and my buddy is pointing his gun (and I have to tell you, if bullets started flying, I know Alex would have died cause he had never shot a gun in his life) at the fucker with his gun leveled at my face.
I yell at Alex to back off, and I look at my guy and tell him, to chill, that I was going to pull out my cash, I would drop it to the floor, and we would just back out. We would never see each other again. So out came this wad of cash, I dropped it on the floor, and backed away while Alex kept his gun trained on the bald guy.
I lost over $700 dollars that night, but I did not lose my life. On the way home, I heard that Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight.” As odd as it is, I find it difficult to listen to that song even so many years later. I can listen to The Church all day long, but “In The Air Tonight,” reminds me of my mortality and how close I came that night to experiencing my mortality.
